Innovation awards: Reproinfo helping to get cows pregnant
Senior software engineer Tarik Chowdhury, Reprodoc founder Dr Dan Ryan and John Mallon, chief technical officer. Photograph: Conor McCabe
Modern farming is run on hard-nosed business practices. Everything comes down to the bottom line, and that includes the fertility of cows on a dairy farm.
According to Jerry Henchy, chief executive of Irish firm Reproinfo, efficient milk production requires that breeding cows become pregnant every 11 to 14 months. The efficiency with which cows convert food to milk decreases significantly approximately 12 months from the birth of the cow’s last calf, with the cow eventually ceasing to produce any milk as nature is telling the cow that it is no longer necessary.
Failure to get cows pregnant within a prescribed period after their last calf can have a very significant impact on a dairy farm’s profitability. Farmers are consequently seeking ways to improve the fertility of their cattle, particularly in the intensive farming sector.
Intensive dairy farming involves keeping cattle in large sheds for most of their lives and is not practiced in Ireland due to the fact that this country is blessed with large resources of good quality grassland. However, worldwide there are 180 million dairy cows and 40 million of these are farmed intensively.
It has been shown that these intensively farmed cows are taking 30 to 50 days longer than the optimal time from giving birth and getting pregnant again. According to Henchy, the financial cost of this is some €3 per day. This results in an annual cost to the dairy sector of anything up to €6 billion annually.
Henchy also points to an environmental cost, noting that the less milk produced per animal results in a higher average greenhouse gas emissions total per unit of output for the farms.
The dairy industry employs a variety of tools and methods in its efforts to tackle this issue. Drugs are used to directly improve fertility, new technologies have been developed to better determine when the animal is in heat, and blood tests and ultrasound scans are used to monitor the animals and determine whether they are pregnant or not.
Article - Irish Times